When a 19-year-old woman from Tyneside was this week barred from her own home under the terms of an anti-social behaviour order, the national media (including this newspaper) were as one in turning to a single representative to illuminate the subject: "the real-life Vicky Pollard", according to the Daily Mirror. "Good riddance to chav scum: real life Vicky Pollard evicted", was the Daily Star's headline, tying together two current tabloid fixations into its image of an out-of-control urban teenager. They were confident that readers would recognise the reference to Vicky Pollard, the inarticulate, abusive and feckless teenage single mother who graces the hit BBC comedy show Little Britain.
It is a tribute to the wit of the creators of Little Britain - which has won a string of awards - that its dystopian characters and Swiftian satire has struck a popular chord, in a series that began life as an unheralded slow burner on BBC3. But what Little Britain created in Vicky Pollard is a fictional character who is clearly a caricature and parody. In attempting to hijack that image for its own ends, tabloid Britain is creating something more dangerous: a stereotype that dissolves the difference between fiction and reality, and allows "real life" cases to be traduced into a media pigeonhole.
In truth there are no real life Vicky Pollards, any more than journalists are mac-wearing hacks with press cards tucked into hat-bands. Yesterday this newspaper carried a survey of 15 to 24-year-olds showing them to be more abstemious and socially conservative in many respects than the same age group a decade ago. There is also plenty of evidence that today's teenage single mothers are as concerned with training and opportunity as their childless peers. More worryingly, in this age bracket there is a one million-strong group described as Neets: not in education, employment and training. Providing for these groups - like the Tyneside teenager, raised in an area blighted by unemployment - is an issue that government and society should address seriously rather than dismiss with borrowed catchphrases.
